Monster
by nine miles to go
Summary: He thought it would feel good...but now, staring down at the kid's crumpled form, he doesn't think so anymore. One shot. AU.
1. Chapter One

Disclaimer: I don't own Fantastic Four.

* * *

**Monster**

Ben had wondered if this day would come.

Now that it had, he could only stand with his feet firmly on the ground, staring into the oblivion of gray cement that seemed to swim beneath him. He hadn't really meant it. Yes, he'd wanted to do it for some time now. And yes, he'd imagined time and time again how satisfying it would be to prove, once and for all, that he was still superior.

He looked down at his dry, cracking hands. Now that it was over, now that the deed was done, his hands weren't the same. They weren't physically different, of course; he'd used these same enormous fingers to hold up a collapsing building just this morning. He'd used them yesterday to caress Alicia's face. But now. . . he saw himself for the monster he truly was. For the monster he had truly become.

"Oh, my God," he said under his breath, the actuality of his mistake rising in his chest, crushing his hardened, stony lungs. Scattered, broken thoughts streamed through his head. He should call for help. He should call Reed and let him know what happened.

"_So, I've been thinking, Pebbles."_

"_Oh yeah?" Ben was in an awful mood today. Alicia had left for an arts convention in California and he already missed her. He was by no means able to tolerate the kid's antics today. _

He buried his head in his hands—the sin-ridden hands—and thought that maybe, for the first time since he'd turned into this mutant, he might be crying actual tears. Because he _wasn't_ a monster. True, he did get riled up on occasion, but he would never hurt somebody purposefully. Especially not. . .

Johnny. Lying on the sidewalk in a pool of blood, pale and unconscious, his eyes closed in a grimace of pain. Their kid.

Since the time Johnny had first taunted Ben about his powers, he'd known that he could easily overpower the kid. It was a constant nuisance, an everyday test of his self-control, trying not to put the kid in his place whenever he got cocky. But Ben would never do that to him. Not to the kid. He knew the kid well enough to know that he never really meant his sarcastic, biting remarks; even before the storm had changed their lives, Ben had had a soft spot for him.

The ache in his chest near doubled, remembering the early days—the simple days. Back at NASA, when Ben had been Johnny's commanding officer, he'd given the kid absolute hell. But Johnny had thrived. His potential as a pilot grew to near impossible limits for a boy of his age; he'd been hardly seventeen, a high school dropout. Incredibly smart, but unmotivated. Ben had whooped his ass into shape.

As much as Johnny complained, though, Ben knew he was grateful. Because whenever matters were serious, Johnny was the first at his defense. The kid stuck up for him in public, watched his back during emergency calls, asked if he was okay whenever he seemed distressed. Johnny liked it when everyone assumed he was heartless, but Ben knew the truth.

Which was why that made this so much more unbearable.

"_You know how Reed said all of your organs were made of stone?" the kid asked lightly as they made their way back from the club. _

_Ben grit his teeth. He wouldn't yell at the kid—he'd had a tough few weeks after coming down hard on himself when he didn't manage to rescue a last survivor in a fire. Before now, he hadn't been himself, really; no wisecracks, no mockery, no partying or cockiness. He was losing weight, spending hours in his room, so deep in thought that he couldn't hear anyone knocking on his door. The team was worried about him. _

_So he forced himself to answer. "Yes," he said as calmly as possible. _

_The kid grinned slyly. "So, wouldn't that mean your brain was made out of stone, too?" It was the first time he'd smiled in a month. "I mean, I've personally always thought you were a rockhead, but—"_

And then he'd done it. Ben—calm, reasonable, caring _Ben Grimm_—had backhanded the kid into an alley wall.

The kid had crumpled instantly. Ben wondered if there had even been a moment for him to perceive what had happened to him as he fell. Johnny's body had seemed as light as a feather, as if Ben had hit sheets hanging off a clothesline instead of a full grown twenty-year-old man.

Now, a full minute after the incident, he was still gaping at his bleeding friend. The kid he'd taken under his wing. The one he'd tried to straighten out, the one he'd tried to protect from the Von Dooms of the world. Susie's little brother. A member of their _family. _

"Johnny?"

His normally deep, rasped voice seemed all at once jagged and torn. He shuddered, taking a deep breath. The streetlamp illuminated the blood seeping from Johnny's head and Ben had to look away for a moment, disgusted with himself. Of all the people he could possibly hurt, it was Johnny that he would least expect to be his victim. The kid who'd been an orphan since the age of nine, who had felt lost and purposeless before Ben put him into motion—Ben had tried to be there for him in the way his father never could be. Obviously, by the looks of things, he wasn't doing nearly enough to complete that task.

It was plain to see Johnny was a mess, and not just because of what Ben had done to him. There were deep circles under his eyes. His skin was pale, his frame weaker and smaller, his eyes less vibrant and mischievous. Ben saw the bloody marks on the kid's open palms where he must have subconsciously embedded his nails in a fist. Why had no one made an effort to help him?

It was too late to help him now. Johnny would never trust him again.

Ben leaned down, the earth beneath him groaning slightly at his weight. He carefully touched Johnny's shoulder. "Kid?"

Johnny didn't move a muscle. He didn't even wince—he was out cold.

Even through his thick, massive fingers he could make out a pulse. A weak one, but a sure one nonetheless. He'd have to hurry and get Johnny back to Reed if the kid would have a chance. He cast his eyes down to the ground in shame. How would he ever explain this to them? _I got PO'd, so I smacked him unconscious. By the way, this is the same Ben Grimm who is supposed to be a model citizen for children everywhere. _

Cautiously he lifted his friend off of the ground—the Baxter Building was only a block away. He could carry him there on the abandoned night streets without any disturbances. Anxiously, Ben began to hurry towards the apartment, trying to forget himself and his guilt long enough to make the kid safe again.

Johnny looked so young with his eyes shut, Ben realized. But then again, he_ was_ young. It wasn't fair that he and Sue and Reed were always down his throat about everything—it wasn't like it wasn't normal for a kid to party. He'd been nineteen when he'd turned into the Human Torch—hardly an adult. In fact, it was laughable that they put so much responsibility on him. But the powers made them regard him as an adult, as hard as it was on him; fortunately, though, over the past few months, he truly had grown. Much to Sue's utter confusion, he was becoming more and more like Reed every day.

Well, except for tonight. When he was actually being himself, and Ben had clobbered the living daylights out of him.

He realized he was standing outside the apartment door. Nobody had given him weird stares on the way up to the top floor. For once, the place was empty...but somehow this didn't comfort Ben. He wished someone would yell at him, beat the crap out of him, shake him and make him see, really _see, _what he'd just done to one of his best friends. But nobody could do that now, and nobody ever would. People were too scared of the Thing to oppose him, and he was too bulky to be shaken or beaten by anyone.

The doorknob twisted and Ben forgot his strength, accidentally crumpling the metal in his fingers. "Damn it," he grumbled, using his shoulder to ease the door open instead.

Sue was awake instantly. "Ben?" she asked groggily, seeing his frame in the doorway. "How was the. . . ?"

Party. Ben had forgotten that earlier in the night they'd been at a party—not that either one of them had been in the mood.

A violent gasp escaped Sue's mouth and she pitched forward towards Ben, seeming to reach them in one single, terrified stride. "Johnny," she whispered, touching his face, wiping some blood off of his forehead.

The panic in the room was stifling. Sue was beyond words, staring stupidly at the two of them as if she couldn't possibly comprehend what was happening. "But...but..." Her eyes filled with tears. "Who did this?" she demanded, her voice louder now.

The noise alerted Reed, who stumbled out of a room, rubbing the sleep off of his eyes. "Hey—" he stopped in his tracks, seeing Sue's expression. "What happened?"

"Johnny," Sue said weakly, motioning to her limp brother in Ben's arms.

Reed's eyes widened. "Oh my God," he stammered, pulling Ben into the lab. Numbly, Ben set Johnny limp body on the metal table, stepping aside to let Reed work.

Reed gave the kid a quick once-over, cringing at what he saw. "What the hell hit him?" he asked, seeing the gaping, bleeding mass on his head, the bruises and cuts on his right side where he'd collided with the wall. Ben swallowed hard, wishing he could just spit it out without feeling so awful. Finally he just came out and admitted it:

"I hit him."

It was barely a whisper. Neither Reed nor Sue heard him; or if they had, they chose to ignore him.

"I hit the kid," Ben repeated himself, louder this time.

Sue heard him this time. "What?" she asked, incredulous. Her eyes, shining with tears anxious tears, widened in disbelief.

Reed was attaching machines to Johnny, paying everyone else no mind. "He's cold. His temperature's dropping," he said frantically. "Sue, get me something to stop the bleeding!"

She snapped out of her stupor. "Get out of here, Ben," she said viciously.

Ben bit his lip, flinching at the sharp noise of rock on rock. "I. . .but. . ."

"I said _get out_!" she shrieked hysterically. "Look what you did to my brother! You're. . . you're. . ." She let out a strangled sob. "You're a _monster._"

The infamous Thing could only stand there and stare stupidly at his feet. He knew that no one could ever slap him and make him physically hurt, but Susie had come as close to it as anyone ever would.

"Sue!" Reed yelled again, completely unaware of what was happening, "I need your help, okay?"

She rounded on him then, leaving him in the midst of his own misery. A machine hooked up to Johnny started beeping loudly. Reed swore colorfully, yelling at Sue to hurry up. Ben looked up and saw Johnny, small and pale, with an oxygen mask now attached to his face.

He couldn't take it. If Johnny was going to die on them, he wouldn't stand there to watch.

No. Instead he did everyone a favor—exactly what Sue wanted. Turning his back on the beeping machine, his frantic best friends, his wounded apprentice, and everything the Fantastic Four stood for, he left.

* * *

And that was my first (and probably last) Fantastic Four fanfiction. I really just had to get that off my chest because Johnny angst was dying to be written. DYING to be written! It was like...something COMPELLED me to torture him. What is it about him that makes him so torturable? Probably the whole cocky I'm-king-of-the-world-while-still-being-boyishly-innocent thing. Eh. Anyway. Review?

running in circles


	2. Chapter Two

Disclaimer: Don't own Fantastic Four, just write!

Just wanted everyone to know that the story's totally AU :D

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_Chapter Two _

"I got a call from Sue this morning," Alicia mentioned.

Ben froze, his fork perched in the air. "Oh yeah?" he said after a few moments, prompting her to continue.

"She's wondering where you've been."

Ben nodded, then remembered that she couldn't see him. "Really," he said in acknowledgement, eventually setting the fork down. He'd lost his appetite and it was only ten in the morning. "And Johnny?" he asked, trying to quench the anxiousness in his voice.

"He's doing better. Sue says he still can't remember what happened. . . but he's starting to get suspicious. He's been asking for you."

Ben frowned.

"Sue won't let him leave the house," Alicia explained. She searched around for his hand; Ben gave it to her. "Ben, I know it's hard. But they understand what happened. It could have happened to _any one of them_. They know that you didn't mean it, they really do," she pleaded with him, not for the first time in the past week. She squeezed his hand, a touch he could barely feel because of her frail gentility. He resisted the urge to take back his hand and ignore what she'd said—Alicia would never lie to him. She was the only one he felt he could trust right now.

Eventually Alicia let go. Ben watched her as she took a last bite of her waffle and swig of her water bottle. "Anything interesting in the paper?" she asked him.

Ben looked over at the untouched paper, still in its wrappings. _Fantastic Four no more? _one of the headlines read. He put his head in his hands. He knew Susie and Reed were still out on calls, but Johnny was probably still too out-of-it and Ben was hiding in his girlfriend's apartment. No wonder people were speculating about a break-up of their favorite superheroes.

"No," he lied, and then immediately felt bad about it. Well, it wasn't all _that_ interesting, was it? "Off to work?"

"Yeah," she said, grabbing her purse.

Ben got up to walk her to the door. "How's the project coming along?" he asked lightly, referring to a sculpture she and two other friends were helping create.

She grinned, rolling her eyes. "We're trying," she laughed. "You'd think they'd never seen a blind person before, the way they act around me. They're not like you, stud, that's for sure."

"Hm," he said, forcing himself to chuckle for her benefit. In truth, his mind was already drifting off to his own friends. Was there an emergency right now? Probably not. Ben spent whatever time he had to spare watching the news channel like a hawk, just in case there was something he could help with. So far there hadn't been anything that couldn't easily be handled by one of them, so he hadn't seen the team in a couple of days. He couldn't help but avoid them after...

"See you at six, okay?" Alicia bid him, waving so that her bracelets jangled as she left the apartment.

Ben smiled to himself. "Six, then—bye," he called after her. He would help walk her down, but she insisted that she wanted to maneuver around the building herself. Nothing could keep his Alicia off her feet.

The moment he was certain she was out of earshot, Ben flicked the television back on. A weight sank in his already heavy, solid stomach when he saw what he'd dreaded and anticipated for the past few days. An actual emergency.

He sighed and noted the area of the fire. It was only about three blocks away—he didn't even need a taxi (and thank goodness for that, because it was certainly hard enough to tail one in this city, let alone sit down in one at his size). Without another thought, he headed out the door and hurried for the building.

* * *

"Johnny—you don't have to..." Sue pleaded, but she saw the look in her brother's eyes and stopped. There was no convincing him to stay. She knew just as well as he did that in an emergency as serious as a building up in flames, Johnny was the only one who could truly be much help in rescuing people.

"I'm going," he said determinedly. He grinned at his panicky sister. "I'm fine, okay? It's been, like, I don't know. _Days. _I'm bored outta my mind—I'm near desperate enough to ask Stretch to be his petty science guinea pig just to get out of sitting on the couch."

"But..." Sue hesitated.

Johnny's grin faded. "Look, Sue. This isn't about me. This is about people trapped in a burning building that need our help, and if you two try, you'll only get hurt. So let's go."

"Nothing fancy, Johnny. We're in, we're out. You're going straight home afterwards."

He nodded. "Alright already. I'm off. Hurry up, okay?" he said, the cocky grin already returned as he headed straight for the ledge to jump.

Reed put a stilling hand on Sue's shoulder. "Don't worry. It's Johnny we're talking about—he'll be fine."

Sue shuddered. "Oh, I know. . . I just . . . these past few days have been hard. I feel like we're being torn apart." Her eyes filled with tears that she blinked back before they fell. "I wish Ben were still here. I miss him. I miss what we were." She fiddled with a strand of her hair, something she hadn't done since she was a little girl.

"Ben will come around," Reed assured her. "He just needs some time by himself, that's all."

"I hope."

"C'mon, let's go," Reed finally said, remembering the task at hand. He looked over to the ledge and saw the Johnny himself was long gone, probably having "flamed on" well over a minute ago. All the more reason to hurry up—though Reed would never admit it to his already anxious wife, even he doubted that Johnny was quite ready for this after the incident with Ben.

Not that he could remember it, though. Reed hadn't decided whether that was for the best or the worst. All Johnny remembered was being at some club with Ben and waking up a day later feeling extremely hung over. He didn't remember being hit or being carried back to the apartment a total mess. He didn't know just how close he'd come to bleeding to death. He was just Johnny, the same as he'd always be—completely unaware of what was going on around him.

But Reed would deal with all the crap later. Right now he and Sue had a job to do.

* * *

"Mr. Storm, are the rumors of a break-up true?"

"Is it true that you and another woman have eloped and hidden in the Baxter Building in the past week?"

"Where have you and The Thing been?"

"How do you plan to react to this emergency?"

Johnny shoved his way through the crowd. "First, by getting the _damn reporters_ out of my way!" he screamed, uncharacteristically mad at all the media attention he received. In a suffocating sweep of thought, he remembered the last time there had been a major fire. Panic seized his chest. The one person left behind . . . the one he couldn't save fast enough. The person who had unwittingly plagued his mornings and nights for a month now.

He'd make it up to the man, whoever he was, and whoever was left to miss him.

"Flame on," he muttered, not at all with his usual vigor. A fireman pointed him to the fourth story window, so he started there. He felt himself slip into Superhero Mode—that unfeeling adrenaline rush that flushed through his whole body, numbing his mind and leaving him to focus on the task at hand and the task alone. He forgot that his head was still hurting after that mysterious clubbing incident. He forgot that Ben hadn't shown up in nearly a week. He forgot his fear that he'd done something to seriously piss Ben off. He forgot, even, about that poor victim left to die a month ago—if only for a moment, it slid off of his conscience to make room for the new set of screaming people.

"Forty-second floor," someone shrieked to Johnny. "Up at the forty-second floor!"

Johnny nodded in acknowledgement, redirecting his burning body towards the higher floor. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sue and Reed arriving on the scene, Sue's force field already intact and Reed's arms stretching to people in high up windows. It was Johnny's job to dig deeper than the first layer at the window and find the people inside, and task that he usually never failed to perform.

Usually, he thought to himself bitterly.

By the looks of things, this was once an apartment building. It was already too charred and full of smoke for him to really be able to tell.

"Hello?" he called at the top of his voice, venturing into the thick wall of flame. He'd never quite get used to that, even though it was as normal in his life as breathing by now.

"Help!" someone pleaded weakly.

"I'm coming," Johnny promised them, feeling his heart want to wrench from pounding so hard. There was nothing to him more frightening than having someone else's life in his hands. He was twenty—hardly responsible enough for himself. When had he suddenly become appointed to this? All his life he'd been that cocky kid with the god complex, but when had he actually been forced to play God?

"Hold on," he cried out to the stranger, the smoke blinding him for a few moments. He stumbled unseeingly in his desperation to find whoever it was. "Where are you?"

"Over here!"

It was coming straight ahead of him. He thought bitterly to his days playing Marco Polo with his friends at the pool. It couldn't have been that long ago that he was that careless.

"Kid?"

Johnny froze; he could only hear the roar of the fire and the pounding of his heart.

"_Ben?_" he asked the smoke around him.

Then the ceiling caved in around them.

* * *

OMG! Everyone MUST listen to Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek." Best song ever. And this is coming from Miss Alternative Rock, Country Music and Disney Channel Music Girl. The song is played without music. It's one woman's (Heap's) voice harmonizing in, like, five different parts. It's amazing. Her voice is amazing.

Lock up your iPods, folks...a meanhead stole my shuffle...wahhhh!

Oh! Yeah, I left a cliffie. Hahahahaha. Enjoy.


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